


tried to be nice

by Idestroyedtheworldoops



Series: e·mo·tion [3]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Missing Scene(s), New Orleans Live Show, Not compliant with htw (aib), and it is directly thematically related to atwcdwte so, original draft title was not a flower on the wall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-10-21 15:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20696147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idestroyedtheworldoops/pseuds/Idestroyedtheworldoops
Summary: "So we came to in the astral plane, which was pretty yucky at the time because of the... Hungry that was happening?"Hunger. Hunger."It was a blur, kind of—"Hangry."It was theHangry,- we had a chance to sneak out, find ourselves in the realm of the gods, and boys, we liked what we saw!" : the vogue elves's two-year trip from being liches to ghosts to godservants to... something new





	1. 1516 DR

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Midsummer's Eve, 1516 DR

Lydia can hardly feel, can hardly think. In her final moments she lashes out, destroys something that maybe those people can’t stand to lose, that might make them suffer like she is. She doesn’t try to hold herself together, after that, to draw on the Suffering in her or around her- there’s no point.

And then, she is drifting, drifting through space, drifting through planes, and through her haze of fury and grief she can feel herself being pulled in opposite directions, two different forces calling out for her. She doesn’t _care_. She can’t bear eternity like this, she can’t be out here alone, she wants an _end_. And so she welcomes the shimmering blackness which promises just that.

But then, there is a third force. Immaterial hands grabbing her by the arms and pulling her away from the oil-slicked sea, back up towards the dark sky. She screams again, but she is cut off, her voice muffled when her face presses into someone else’s shoulder, and arms wrap around her. She freezes, for a moment, before she can bring herself to look up, but when she does what is left of her shakes with a sob.

A wispy, gray, ethereal form. A young elven man in a hooded cloak.

Edward has been panicking and suffering alone, conflicted between the the fury he felt at the thought of his sister dying and the absolute hopeless dread he felt at the thought of spending eternity alone.

They are both here, now, for better and for worse, and Lydia wraps her arms around his shoulders.

“You’re okay,” she whispers, her voice shaking, and his arms tighten around her. “I thought you were gone,” she whispers hoarsely into Edward’s shoulder. “I thought they destroyed you.”

Edward shakes his head, doing his best to comfort her. As bad as getting beat up by a fiery umbrella lich had been, he knows he got off easy, in comparison to Lydia. He can hardly imagine- he doesn’t want to imagine what it was like. What it would have been like to have to watch her turn to dust in his arms.

“I couldn’t- I could’ve, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t hold on,” Lydia chokes out, her face still buried in his shoulder, “I couldn’t do it without you.”

Edward nods, stroking the ethereal projection of her hair.

She looks up, looks him in the face. They are not skeletons, at least. They look like their living selves, if in their circle robes, wispy and grey like the rest of them.

“I still needed you,” she says, “I still need you. I’ll always need you.”

Edward is choking up again, too. “I love you, Lydia.”

Lydia nods, falling back into their hug. “I love you, Edward."

They remain like this, embracing and shaking, for what seems like a long time. After a while, they raise their heads to their surroundings, but do not let go of each other.

They are surrounded on all sides by an angry gray sky and a roiling black sea, the only break in which is an ominous stone fortress sticking out of the water. These are the forces that had been calling for them; a misery even greater than that which they’ve ever wrought, and a holy power desperate to finally bring justice upon them. Both are easy to ignore, now that they hold each other in their arms.

“Is it supposed to be so empty?” Lydia asks. Her eyes rake across the waters, but she can’t find a single sign of a soul anywhere.

“It can’t be,” he replies, furrowing his brow. He looks worriedly down at the shimmering oil slick on the choppy water. “What could have done this to an entire plane?”

Lydia’s gaze lingers on the darkness for another moment before she looks back into her brothers eyes. “I don’t wanna find out.”

She takes his hands in hers and starts trying to channel a _Plane Shift_, then stops short when she realizes they don’t have foci. 

“Damn it,” she says. She looks around. “There’s got to be some way out of here.”

A splash from far below spooks them out of their current position. Sparing a glance behind them they can see a figure crawling up onto Prison Greyskull, but it doesn’t seem to be a part of the oily dark mass coating most of the place.

As they watch, the figure pulls themself up and through the doors to the prison, leaving Lydia and Edward’s line of sight.

“Do you think there could be a way out through there?” Edward asks his sister.

“Inside the prison?” she raises an eyebrow at him. “They’d never. I’d be the last person to have faith in the death cops, but I struggle to believe even they’d be that poor at planning.”

She scans the inky horizon. “There must be something else here. It wouldn’t make sense for the bird police to keep all of their sensitive information and magicks within arms reach of the criminals, behind bars or no.”

Edward looks warily down at the roiling black mass surrounding them. “We oughta get looking then.”

It’s hard to measure how much time passes as they float over the Astral Sea. The world around them is completely featureless, a blank slate of dark sea and dark sky. They each doubt at times that they are moving at all- until, at long last, they see a shape in the darkness.

The palace seems to be made of ice- it is shimmering, off-white, and translucent, reflecting the sparkling colors inside the black tar slowly encroaching it. The main entryway is already half-flooded with the tar, and the water level only increases as they watch.

Lydia and Edward exchange a look as they come upon the palace, and only have time to grasp each other’s ghostly arms before they duck into the entrance to the castle, just as the tar floods the entrance completely.

They float quickly upward, narrowly avoiding making physical contact with the stuff. Edward looks around the dark castle nervously, eyes lingering on the now defunct entrance.

“I really hope there’s something in here,” he says with a shake in his voice.

“If there isn’t we’ll just float out a window,” Lydia says, tugging at his arm reassuringly. “Gravity hasn’t mattered for us for a while, dearest, keep up.”

She smiles at him and he smiles back, with a small sigh, as she leads him up the stairs.

The black tar is creeping up them as well, creating a kaleidoscopic escalator effect just beneath their floating feet. They won’t touch the stuff, but they can’t float as far away from it as they did outside either, and the awful energy of hopelessness is harder to ignore.

As they crest the grand staircase they come upon a long hallway with several doors on either side. But the most noticeable thing is that the tar that they had seen on the stairs does not flood this hall; instead, it continues only on a direct path toward a room on the far right.

The twins lock eyes.

“Do you think…?” Lydia asks

“Noooo,” Edward whines.

“Probably, though, right?” she asks, taking his reluctance as confirmation.

He groans and pushes open one of the closer doors for the hell of it. There is nothing but a pristine looking bed, a few shelves, and an empty desk.

“Guest quarters,” Lydia appraises. “I suppose even the goddess of death has friends.”

“And what kind of sense would it make to put-” Edward starts, then stops himself, looking defeated. “It would make perfect sense to keep your interplanar portal in the same hall as your guest rooms,” he states monotonously.

“I don’t love it any more than you do,” Lydia chides, leading confidently down the hall over the path created by the tar.

The door is difficult to get open, due both in part to the tar sticking around it and their lack of any-body strength, but they manage. When the door opens, they see what the slime is trying to do.

In the center of the room is the outline of a Teleportation Circle, but it has been filled in completely with the black tar, creating a swirling whirlpool that seems to bleed through the portal itself.

“Fuck,” Lydia says.

“Let’s get outta here,” Edward says, pulling her back towards the hall to find a room with windows.

“Wait,” she says, not letting herself be moved. She watches the tar slide over the circle.

“Lyd?” he asks, tilting his head at her.

“We need to get out of here,” she says. He nods, gesturing out of the room, but she continues, “This may be our only chance to get out of the afterlife before the natural order is back up and running, and this is the only way out of here.”

“Lydia, this isn’t a way out, this is a death trap!” Edward says, gesturing wildly at the roiling black ooze. “Look at that stuff? Do you have a way to get it off, cause I sure don’t! If you haven’t noticed, we’re just normal ghosts right now. We can barely open a _door_. We have _zero_ magic powers.”

“But we’re still us.”

Edward bites his lip and crinkles his brow as his sister finally looks up from the hypnotic swirl of the tar and over to him. “And we could survive anything together.”

She pulls him closer to her on ‘together’, and he begins to realize what she is intending.

“_Lydia_,” he says, looking from his sister to the tar with wide eyes.

“That person from before survived it! And who’s to say how long they were under there? This will only be for long enough to clear the portal, and _we_ aren’t just anybody,” she takes her brother’s other hand. “We may not have our stores of Emotion anymore, but we still have the Emotion inside our souls. People have invoked miracles with less! We don’t need our magic, Eds, we never did. I learned that just now, when- when. You know.” She holds him close and looks solidly into his eyes. “All we need to survive is each other. Trust me, Eds. Please trust me.”

His heart constricts at the thought of his sister alone in her final moments, surrounded by all the power in the world but not using it to save herself. Because of him. Because power isn’t what matters, in the end.

He squeezes her back and nods.

“Of course.” He smiles at her. “Forever.”

She grins back.

And just like that, filled with hope and holding each other tight, they sink down into the tar.

The suffering they surrounded themselves with for centuries was nothing compared to the feeling that bombards them as soon as they go under. The pain of billions of people, crushed together into a formless numb, a nihilism so strong it threatens to tear them apart. They are surrounded on all sides- except, vitally, the sides they have pressed into each other. All they know, all they focus on in the long moments of dredging through the darkness is the light of the other’s soul, and the vague motion of _forward_. It feels like an eternity passes with no end to the dark in sight before finally, finally, the tar slicks away from them.

It takes them a moment to get their bearings- they are shaken, arms wrapped tightly around each other like a lifeline. Not ‘like’, even. They feel the call of the darkness still, but it is so distant in comparison to the overwhelming feeling from moments ago they manage to push it out of their minds.

“WHAT. Is. Happening.”

They hear a great squaking voice and dart in a random direction away from it. Luckily they find themselves in the shadow of the great podium they just emerged from, on top of which sits a similarly-fucked-up Teleportation Circle. Lucky because they are now just out of the line of sight of two large woman. One is veiled in black and pacing wildly around back and forth in front of the other, who sits knitting a tapestry with a calm, contemplative look on her face.

“Can’t be sure,” the knitting woman replies.

“YOU. Can’t be. Sure?” the pacing one turns on her.

“Listen,” the knitting woman looks up. “Weej. I know this is concerning, and I’m not sure exactly what’s going to happen,” she pauses, looking up at the other woman with a smile. “But our boys got this.”

The veiled woman goes on into a spiel about how she can’t _contact_ her _boy_ so how can she _know_-

And that’s about when Lydia and Edward slip out through the wide-open cottage door.

The Plane of the Gods is a little more washed out than they expected, but they figure that can be attributed to the apocalypse. The godly domains surrounding them are plentiful, spread out before them and mostly abandoned- theirs for the choosing.

Lydia squeezes Edward’s hand and squeals out loud. “We did it!”

He hugs her, and she hugs him back eagerly. Their ghostly forms are just a smidge more solid now, a golden energy rippling through them, the immortal plane trying to make sense of something dead.

“I am _so_ glad that worked,” he says. “Let’s never do that again.”

She grins into his shoulder, then glances up and around. “I think I could stand to stay here for a bit.”

He looks up with her. “Where to?” He glances semi-nervously at the still-open cottage, from which the sounds of the two goddesses quibbling can still be heard.

Lydia scans the horizon, and it doesn’t take her long to decide. She points at the large kingdom at the edge of the skyline, guard posts as abandoned as the other ones, done up in neon and chandeliers and clouds. Highlighted by some dutifully-rotating floodlights, a sign simply reads: ‘Reggietown’.

Lydia and Edward lock eyes and smile, beginning the leisurely float over to the party kingdom.

*

“Oh, I could get used to this.”

Every imaginable kind of party floats around them - the set up for every imaginable party, anyway. The place is a ghost town.

Perfect for them.

The two of them float arm-in-arm over to an abandoned DJ setup, and Lydia taps a record into place, testing it. Upbeat party music blasts them so fast their weightless forms are actually blown back a little bit by the force of the sound. Lydia grins and Edward laughs as they both start moving to the music- it’s exactly their style, and when they both move onto the dance floor in tandem they feel like they are living again. The burning hopelessness of their recent defeat seems so far away now, because here they are, enjoying their continuing existence just the way they like, just like they had been yesterday, just like they had been for a thousand years.

It seems normal when the shaft of light appears. There are already plenty of beams of strobe light dancing around them, and they’re enjoying themselves so thoroughly they don’t notice the man descending upon them until it is too late.

_”WHO IN THE NAME OF ME-_” A booming voice starts, “IS SINGLE HANDEDLY THROWING A TEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DANG APOCALYPSE?”

A large human man with a curly beard and a hat with two cups labeled “Brosia” in it is staring down at them as they freeze in place. They look at each other, wanting desperately to either laugh out loud or disappear entirely. In the lack of those options, Edward tilts his head and swings the arm he has linked with his sister. “Us?”

The man’s stoic expression cracks into one of borderline panic as the music stops and the energy of the room dies down. “Well could you- could you tell me how to do it? I’m supposed to be the god here but I’m freaking out man! The colors getting sucked out of everything and this weird black ooze is fucking up all the portals to the other planes and it’s harshing-” he gestures to the empty parties around them- “ALL my vibes!”

They exchange another glance, and Lydia opens her mouth to speak but the apparent god cuts her off before she can get a word in.

“Listen bros I’ve only been a god for like ten years I don’t know if this is like, normal? Is this normal? Does this happen?”

“Yes,” Lydia cuts in before he can continue, and Edward nods solemnly.

“Very very normal, dear, no need to worry at all! It’s just the annual-”

Lydia elbows him.

“_Deci_-annual- apocalypse! Drill!”

Lydia raises an eyebrow at him, and he shrugs helplessly.

“Right,” she floats over to the god, and sets an arm on his shoulder. Her brother does the same on his other side. “Perfectly normal, dear Reginald.” She smiles. “No need to be concerned at all.”

The god seems to take their words completely at face value. He relaxes and lets out a relieved sigh.

“Thanks you guys,” he says. Then he looks at them. “Who are you guys again?”

Lydia and Edward lock eyes around his back. Then they collapse into crocodile tears.

“Oh, if you must know,” Edward says, fanning his face with his hands, “We… _died_.” He sobs. “But that awful black ooze prevented us from moving onto our final rest!”

Lydia sniffs. “Those awful folks in the Astral Plane forgot to leave a path open for the recently dead- like they’re supposed to? During the drill?- so we were just floating suspended outside everything, and in a last ditch effort to find peace we hopped through the nearest portal we could find.”

“We realized too late that this could be misconstrued as trying to escape our natural deaths,” Edward sobs,

“We would never,” Lydia cuts in,

“So we ran away from the death goddess’s domain for fear of being seen as c-criminals,” Edward says, “And found your fabulous domain to be a fine place to wait this all out.”

“But I suppose you’re going to turn us in now,” Lydia says, wiping the glittery mist tears from her face. “We understand. We deserve to be locked up in a dark old prison for all of eternity just for trying our best to save ourselves.” She stares up at the party god with big eyes.

“No way!” The man they've by now recognized as the neophyte party god, Reggie Fitzpatrick, exclaims. “You two are way too cool to be in jail, or to be crying!”

“But what could we do?” Edward asks forlorny, “Our souls are forfeit to the Raven Queen. It’s not like some,” he sniffs, “_Other_ god is going to vouch for us.”

“You know what?” Reggie points at himself with both thumbs, and Lydia and Edward have to try _very_ hard to keep the smug smiles off their faces. “_This_ god is!”

Before they can even give their gooey groveling thanks they’re both shocked to their core with radiant light. It reminds them at first of the holy magic attacks they’ve been hit with over the years and that makes them panic- did they actually underestimate him?- but then the light becomes something different, something more, warm, comforting, and eventually, solid.

They are _alive_.

Not unalive. Real, living, flesh-and-blood. But even more than their distant memories of their old lives, they feel impossibly vital. Glowing. Radiant. Godly.

“_Hell_ yeah!” Reggie exclaims, clapping them both on the back as they stare at each other in disbelief. They are dressed excellently - golden pantsuits decorated with shimmering green and violet embroidering, definitely up to par with their usual style. Their faces look perfect. Everything is perfect.

“I-”

Reggie cuts off as they grab each other in a fierce hug. They’re warm. Not the natural cold of liches or the just-too-hot of their overcorrecting in the other direction that they've gotten used to over the years. Warm.

“Alright! Yeah!” Reggie says. “Let’s celebrate good times come on!”

They pull away from each other and look up at him. “What did you do?”

“I made you godservants baby!” He looks to the side. “I did it right, right? I’ve never done it before-”

“It’s perfect.” Lydia smiles.

“‘Servants’ is a little presumptuous,” Edward says, but he’s smiling too. He doesn’t think anything could actually dampen his mood in this moment.

“OH You’re right,” Reggie says, taking them completely seriously.

Lydia and Edward look at each other. This is going to be fun.

“How ‘bout-” He holds his hands up like he’s framing a movie scene - “_My Entourage_.”

Lydia and Edward smile with all of the newfound warmth of themselves, linking arms.

“Perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I already have this entire thing written, I just thought I'd try my hand at actually separating a 9k work into chapters for once! I think I'm going to post chapter two on next wednesday, and the final chapter on the wednesday after that.  
If you've read my other Lydia and Edward fics, all that we could do with this emotion and how's the weather (am i better), you might recognize a couple paragraphs from those in here and in chapter two. That's because a lot about my headcanons for what happens to Lydia and Edward changed with the New Orleans live show, but the moment right after Lydia's death and the moment where they hear the story and song stayed the same. I promise it's not just me being lazy ;)  
I hope you enjoyed! Love you, hope you come around next week <3


	2. 1516 DR * 1517 DR

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> <strike>Midsummer</strike> The Day of Story and Song, 1516 DR; Midwinter, 1517 DR; Midsummer's Eve Eve, 1517 DR

All it takes is getting the bouncer back at the door and a few broad assurances that everything is fine in order to fill the parties right back up. It turns out that people are more than willing to ignore their problems the first chance they get if they can be confident it won't affect them in the short term.

Lydia and Edward are mixing the music for the central party when the Story and Songs hit.

“Oof.”

They stand shoulder to shoulder, stumbled a little by the sudden influx of information into their minds. A one hundred year long quest instantly becomes a part of their thoughts, as if it was something they'd always known.

That's nothing, to them; a century is such a short period of time, in the scape of their lives. It's not the bulk or even the suddenness of the information that has them standing up straight and staring wide-eyed at each other. Rather, it is the star players, all of whom they recognize, but one.

The only one who remains nameless to them is the captain, who neither of them linger on. There is the woman who'd carried the Bulwark Staff, who'd tried and failed to claim the Animus Bell; the three players who'd cheated at their game, with their accomplice who'd hijacked Lydia and Edward's energy; and...

Huh.

Lydia remembers one of her final moments as a lich; she remembers wincing as a few of their mannequins climbed out of the audience and started pummeling the body Edward was inhabiting, because she wasn't taking the fight seriously at all and lost control of them to one of their opponents. She knew they would scrap the body after they were done with it anyways, but he was in there _now_. He could feel _pain_ in there, and that thought got her mad enough to try and kill the caster with a wrecking ball, but when that didn't land thanks to their new lich friend, she decided to take things more simple.

She did feel satisfied when Taako's body hit the floor with a thump, still twitching from the aftershocks of her death bolt. Even more so when the mannequins rushed away from Edward to kneel by their fallen master.

_Knocked out by a cantrip_, she'd thought, laughing to herself. She'd barely noticed his umbrella rolling slowly back into his hand, from where he'd dropped it when he fell.

"...huh," Edward says, still staring ahead at Lydia, and pulling her back to the present once again.

"Death Bolt," she whispers.

"Bad Luck," he adds.

They both recall weakening the holdings on a chunk of machinery and watching it crush their contestant. (These ones were a lot more capable than they'd calibrated for, and the fact they were doing so well in a forsaked match was a little embarrassing. It was time to even the scales.)

"Huh," she echoes, and Edward nods.

"What do you think the odds are that they just like... _won't_ figure out the umbrella thing?" Edward asks.

Lydia lets out a slow breath.

"Maybe we should steer clear of the Prime Material Plane for a while," she says, and her brother sucks in a breath and nods again.

They both return their attention to the party around them, only to see that it has come to a sudden stop as the green and blue lights passed through the Celestial Plane.

“Everyone stay calm- well actually don’t, but y'know what I mean,” Lydia calls out across the room as muttering begins.

“I’m sure those… folks… will take care of all of this,” Edward says.

“Now hold on,” comes a voice, and they both tense.

It has been a mere day, perhaps less, since they gained the good graces of Reggie Fitzpatrick the party god. Their agreement is still subject to dissolve. They had hoped it would last a little longer.

Reggie towers before them now, hands on his hips and a party toga hanging loosely from him.

“I thought that you two said this was normal?” he asks, raising a bushy eyebrow.

“Yes…”

“Well…”

Lydia and Edward lock arms with each other and take a discrete step back.

“We really wanted to make you feel better,” Edward says.

“You seemed so… concerned,” Lydia adds, “We thought it’d be best to put your heart at ease while the rest of the world figured all this out.”

“We told the truth about everything else,” Edward says, then bites his lip. That’s… basically true? They really were recently dead, and they really had escaped the Astral Plane to save themselves, but… not from this.

“Yeah?” Reggie asks, giving them the once over. “Well gimme the answer to this one question, you two.”

They brace themselves.

“Do you really love to PARTY?”

They each blink, then laugh.

“Yes!” Edward says.

“So much,” Lydia says.

“Then you’ll always have a place here!” Reggie says, throwing an arm around each of their shoulders. “Now!”

The music in the room booms back on, and Reggie steers Lydia and Edward onto the dance floor. “Let’s party like it’s the end of the world, bros! Heat it UP!”

Lydia and Edward laugh some more in spite of themselves, out of joy more than amusement. The party god is just as open-hearted and foolish as they originally thought. He doesn’t suspect an ounce of evil from them- or maybe, he just doesn’t care.

They want this. Of all the different forms they’ve taken over the years, this is by far the best. They are already used to this wonderland of parties and angels after such a short amount of time. They can make this work. Hell, it’s already working.

*

The apocalypse is predictably thwarted, and they didn’t think the plane of the gods could get more wonderful, but when life and color rush back into everything they are proven wrong. The next six months are the most extraordinary ones they’ve had in a lifetime. Reggie will agree to anything and everything they suggest, but they don’t even have that many changes in mind. They spend their time DJing the main party, or simply dancing around with everyone else, or even sometimes splitting off from each other to seduce one of the angels or celestials inhabiting the kingdom.

Reggie has for the most part ignored his fellow gods for the extent of their time with him, but the time has come for him to see some of the other deities, and it is his turn to host for the upcoming holiday.

And so for the Midwinter's Festival one of the offshoot parties, this one in the shape of a lavish ballroom, is done up in the pink and red ribbons and heart-shaped decor befitting the holiday. Today is meant to be a meeting for the gods, a soiree of sorts for the world’s deities to catch up and make sure they’re all still extant, but that is no reason to forget the season. Lydia and Edward go all out in their decorating and party-planning, of course. They take queues from their old Heart Attack set, feeling almost nostalgic as they deck the hall. They have to remind themselves this is better. Different, but better. They can bring the best parts of their old life in to this one, and leave behind the parts that they no longer need.

The parts that if discovered by the other assembled gods would ruin everything.

Lydia and Edward make their way through the party greeting each guest alongside their new meal ticket, accepting the myriad compliments on the party they designed with the opposite of modesty. They have the common sense to keep stock of the line outside; there's at least one god they'd rather not risk meeting. Of course, she arrives, and they are prepared to excuse themselves graciously and let Reggie take the next few guests on his own. Until they catch sight of her +2.

“Holy shit!”

The words are a rushed whisper. Edward tugs his sister away from Reggie, and huddles up to keep his voice from being heard.

“I know, I know, Shh!” she wraps an arm around his shoulders.

The Bluejeanses are standing in line wearing goth robes, wielding _scythes_ at this _party_ like it’s no big deal, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with with a man dressed similarly to the two of them that they don't recognize. Standing over them is tall figure with her entire body encompassed by a black veil, who they recognize from their brief stop in the goddess of Fate’s cottage as the Raven Queen.

“How are they here??” Edward asks in another panicked whisper. Lydia squeezes his shoulders and puts a hand in front of his face.

“Don’t panic,” she says. “They were bound to find a way to get out of the lich situation after what happened, it fits them that they’d decide to be fucking narcs. We were going to avoid the death goddess anyway, this is no different, we just have to stay calm…” She sighs and closes her eyes.

"Bros?" Reggie asks, his voice carrying over the few-feet gap they put between themselves and him. He sounds concerned. But they know his support won't save them if it's these people in the mix. Lydia and Edward both know the immutable fury that comes when harm is laid to one's family, and it is not something that can be quelled by diplomatic immunity.

"We-" Lydia starts, but in their frazzled-ness neither of them remember the excuse they'd come up with. "We'll be right back!"

They can't leave- too suspicious, to bail on this entire party after so much planning- but they can't be recognized. Lydia takes a deep breath- real, live breath, one of the gifts of her new life that she will _not_ be losing to these people. Even if she has to take a leaf from her old one to make sure of that.

There’s not a person in this ballroom showing enough negative emotion at all to summon anything… except for two. She makes a sound of frustration, and with it draws up black smoke out of her own soul.

She sees Edward’s eyes widen as she opens hers.

“I didn’t think that would still work,” he says.

“I think we’ve had enough practice to make it never not work,” she says, smiling dryly. “So how are you feeling, dear?”

“Oh,” he chuckles a little bit, “Just a little terrified that the lady who beat me up with fire is gonna drag us both to death prison, while probably also beating us up with fire?”

As he speaks the fear rises out of him in the form of that same pitch-black smoke. Just enough for what she needs, now.

She waves her hand in front of their faces, and the black mist that follows her fingers turns into elaborate masquerade masks, hers blue and his pink. They've changed their hair color a thousand times since their last day in Wonderland anyways, so that shouldn't give them away. She lets the remainder of the energy form a magical barrier in the air in front of their faces that should distort their voices just so. 

“Then stay hidden,” she says lowly, in the thrum of her newly altered voice. 

Edward nods with determination.

"Hey!"

They both jump.

"I was just talking y'all up! Can't beat the real thing tho, haha. RQ, this is my Entourage. I wouldn't know how to manage my own hat without them," Reggie says, gesturing towards them like Fantasty Will Smith, and putting them under the eyeless scrutiny of the goddess of death. 

"You guys did a great job with all of this," Barold Bluejeans says, drawing the attention towards himself. Like he senses their discomfort. Like he wants to help them.

"Yeah, I could take a few tips from y'all, and that's saying some," his wife laughs to herself. "I guess that's why you're working over here and we're working in the AP though." Lup holds out a hand to them. "It's nice to meet some other new godservants, for real."

They both hesitate for a split second before Edward quickly clasps her hand and shakes.

"You too!" he says, the spell making unnoticeable the shake in his voice. 

"Apologies if we seem out of sorts at all. Color us starstruck," Lydia says, her voice behind the mask laced with malice. She feels the memory of ash on her hands. "You know, we have the Dating Game set up on the other side of the hall, if you care to test your prowess."

The couple laughs. 

"Eh-" Barry starts.

"Why not?" Lup says, clasping her husband's hand. "'Tis the season. We need four people for that, are you two game?"

"Oh, hate to say we're busy over here," Edward says. 

"You already have a third and fourth number with you, don't you?" Lydia says, gesturing to the dark figures that had drifted a few steps away as they had their conversation. 

Lup grins and pulls her husband towards her coworkers. "RQ! Krav! Bet you sixteen dollars my husband can pick me out of lineup!"

The four from death make their way across the room until they can no longer be seen, and Lydia and Edward let out breaths they hadn't noticed they'd been holding.

"They seem cool," Reggie says in the direction they'd gone. 

"Let's get back to the entryway," Lydia says, her hand clasped with her brother. They both feel tired, all of a sudden.

*

They do stay hidden. It does little to quiet their minds.

Even as she said it she knew it wasn't sustainable. They both did. The moment they let their faces slip, the moment Reggie accidentally mentions their names to his colleagues, they'll be way down in death jail with nothing anyone can do about it, and they spend the rest of the year agonizing over it. Lucky for them the party kingdom offers many avenues to forget, so they’re able to keep doing their jobs without raising much suspicion from their employer, but in the quiet moments they are wracked with fear.

"It isn't fair," Edward says one day, almost a year into their employment with Reggie. It is the middle of the morning, so most of the other revelers are asleep.

Lydia huffs. "When has fair ever mattered with us?"

Edward shakes his head and grabs his sister's hand. "What if they seperate us, Lyd? What are they gonna do to us when they find out?"

"You think I haven't thought about that?" she snaps. "It's _all_ I've thought about since I saw those two, Eds. I know you're scared, we're _both_ scared, we haven't been this scared in eighteen hundred years!"

"It isn't _fair_," he repeats, "We aren't even hurting anyone anymore! And we aren't going to! We have no reason to, we're _fine_, why couldn't they just let us be-"

"The world doesn't care about that," Lydia says. "It never has. I don't know why it would start now."

"It _should_."

Edward crosses his arms and sits down on Reggie's throne.

Lydia takes a few slow breaths before she looks at him out of the corner of her eye. Then, she blinks, and stand up straighter.

That’s a good look.

“Move,” she says, gently shoving him over. The gods are a size above your natural humanoid, so the throne is plenty big enough for the two of them to sit side-by-side.

“Very nice,” she says, looking out over the not-quite deserted party kingdom.

“Mmhm,” her brother sighs, defeated. “I’m gonna miss it.”

Lydia’s face locks in a smile.

“No you’re not.”

“What?” he asks, looking over at her.

“We’re gonna make this ours,” she says, still staring out at Reggietown.

"Are you _kidding_?"

"No!" Lydia says, perfectly straight-faced, her lips still locked in a smile even while her eyes shine with a manic glint. “Think about it! Sure, they can take away our status as godservants and throw us in the death pokey, but they couldn’t do that to _actual_ gods! We’d be more powerful than the Jeans straights, and on an even playing field with their god! _No one_ could stop us then. All we have to do is take Reggie’s place.”

“But…” Edward trails off.

“But?” Lydia asks.  
  
“Reggie’s so nice to us,” Edward says finally. “It seems mean!”

Lydia rolls her eyes. “A lot of people are nice, Eds. _Nice_ can’t protect us; we have to protect each other. Unless you have a better idea?”

“We could take a different god’s place?” Edward suggests.

“And then we’d have to suck it up in their domain instead of here,” Lydia says. “If you replace someone in their slot of a pantheon you kind of have to go along with their established aesthetic. I don’t think this place has changed much since Reggie took over from Bacchus except for the name and, like, fewer vines.”

Edward slumps down for a moment.

“Okay,” he says, and the way he says it tells her it’s not an ‘i-agree’ okay. “Okay- listen. This gonna sound _wild_, like even wilder than the thing you just said, but hear me out.”

She raises an eyebrow at him expectantly.

“What if we replaced the _pantheon_.”

Lydia blinks silently at him.

“Listen! I know- I- even as I say it it’s sounding even wilder than I thought, but _what if_ we got rid of _all_ the gods except maybe Reggie and- started over?”

Lydia stares at him in silence for a few seconds longer. Then, she grabs his face, kisses him on the forehead and squeals.

“_That_ is what we’re doing,” she says, standing up briskly and heading out onto the dancefloor. “We’re gonna be the King and Queen of Heaven, and nobody in the whole _planar system _is going to be able to_ fucking_ touch us_.”_

*

“So do you have a plan in mind?” he asks.

Lydia pauses. “You don’t? It was your idea.”

He shrugs. “I had an idea for the ends, that doesn’t mean I’ve worked out the means!”

She rolls her eyes. “First thing’s first I suppose, we’re going to need Emotion. And a lot of it.”

“Well, Reggie lets us get away with murder,” Edward laughs to himself, “Who’s to notice us taking a little field trip to one of the murder or torture gods’ domains?”

Lydia hums and nods. “That’ll be nice shortcut to that. Possibly the only place here we can flex our other set of unique skills without getting narc’d on, too. Hey, do you think we could meet Shar? Like, before the coup? Maybe we could get some hot Mystra-killing tips. And if anyone has a god-killing weapon lying around- or an idea to make one that we could bring to life- it’s her.”

Edward’s eyes are wide when she looks back at him.

“What?” Lydia asks

“I forgot about her,” Edward says in a hushed voice. “Lydda we can’t just go try to kill _her_ the risk/reward ratio is _off_ the charts.”

“Oh, you baby,” Lydia says, “You just floated killing every god in the Faerunian pantheon but you’re backing off at the mention of one all-powerful Goddess of the Night?”

“Here’s the thing Lydia,” he says, “Say we get-our-hands-on-slash-create a god-killing weapon that we _think_ we can use to kill A god.”

“Mmhm,” she nods along.

“You get to test something like that out, _once_,” he says.

“At least, only once before you lose your cool job with y’know _a god_ and best case scenario have to go on the run again, and maybe even just flat out get sent to Death Jail, which is I believe the scenario we are _explicitly_ trying to avoid,” he continues.

Lydia purses her lips, and thinks for a moment.

“You’re right,” she says flatly.

Edward nods, then slumps. “So. Back to square one?”

Her face is expressionless. “No.”

“No?”

“No,” she looks him dead on. “You’re right we can’t just go up and stab anybody. But, when I was killed, they didn’t even touch me.” She grabs both of his arms. “They took away what was keeping me alive.”

Edward’s eyes widen, even as his heart pangs at the reminder.

“All life- even, no _especially_, immortal life- needs something to feed off of. Something to keep it going. Tell me, brother, what keeps us alive?”

He looks down at the floor, then up. “Each other.”

“...The tangible suffering of others doesn’t hurt, too.”

She smiles. “Yes. And we can and will fall back on either of those when we need it. But what about right now?”

He pauses. “Reggie?”

She nods. “And what‘s keeping Reggie alive?”

Edward bites his lip and thinks for a moment. “It’s not the ‘Brosia.”

She chuckles, but her eyes remain wide and locked on him.

“...Sacrifices,” he finally says. “Worship?.”

“_Belief_,” Lydia agrees. “That’s what keeps a god alive.”

“Then we have to make everyone in the world atheists? Because Asmodeus has been trying that for a good long while and hasn't really gotten close. I mean he’s gotten what he needs, but like-”

He quiets as Lydia slowly shakes her head.

“For thousands of years, we’ve been taking things away from people. Altering their skills, their bodies, their _minds_. And we’ve tried to make it fair, we’ve made it random, made it measured, made it into a _game_. But if we wanted we could always unleash that power unrepentant onto everyone around us.”

“What are you suggesting?” Edward asks.

“We may not be powerful enough to kill all the gods in one fell swoop. And I’m sure we aren’t powerful enough to take the memories of all the gods away from all the people in the world. But if we took the memories of the _people_ from the _gods_…” Lydia finally lets go of his arms and gestures outward.

“Their parts in the world would cease to function. No one’s prayers would be answered, they’d feel abandoned by their gods-” He smiles. “You’re brilliant.”

“You’ve told me.”

He laughs. “We can _do_ this.”

“I know we can,” she says, smiling back at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Dating Game is a game where you try to pick your date from three voice-distorted people behind a veil by the use of anonymous questions. In the real world it's like a the voice-style 'pick a date without seeing what they look like!' thing but in this world it's more a see-how-well-you-know-your-partner game.  
It was also one of the game shows being parodied in Heart Attack. Yes I learned about it via [Roze Buddiez](https://www.maximumfun.org/rose-buddies/roze-buddiez-dating-game) ;)


	3. 1518 DR

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spring Equinox, 1518 DR; Midsummer's Eve, 1518 DR; Midsummer, 1518 DR

It takes them almost eight months to finalize a plan, which is pretty good if you consider it took them a century to get to the first finished version of Wonderland. Thus, at the edge of spring, in the heart of mid-day, they finally take a rare excursion out of Reggietown.

The kingdom of the goddess of pain is, as a whole, disappointing.

Not for their purposes, of course- there’s so much shrill screaming, moaning, and begging to be heard that they can surround themselves in black smoke before they’re even within the bounds of her kingdom. They can see the source soon enough; many open-air alters scattered about this place, most occupied with humanoid sacrifices in varying stages of mutilation. And that seems to be… all of the activity going on.

“The lack of _creativity_,” Edward says lowly with distaste as he and his sister cross the border.

The very streets of the kingdom are caked in blood and sewage so much that it compels them to levitate a few inches off the ground. There are buildings scattered around, low, stout, and foreboding, the only one of note being a tall spiny castle in the distance they assume houses the goddess herself. The Suffering that floods toward them in waves blends perfectly into the aesthetic of this place, like fog in a gothic moor.

“Just strapping people to tables and taking knives to them?” Lydia shook her head in disgust even as necrotic energy pulled towards them in waves.

“So macabre!” Edward critiques, now at full speaking volume.

“And unoriginal,” Lydia says, a little louder, “Don’t you all get bored?”

The twins are a beacon of metallic pastels in this goth’s paradise, so even before they speak they’ve drawn many eyes. It’s the goading, though, that gets several of the daemons manning this realm to flock toward them.

Some brutish, clawed creatures are only stopped from tearing through them by a cloaked figure raising its hand in pause.

“The two of you have strayed from your place,” it says in a whispering voice.

“Have we?” Lydia says.

“You shall pay a steep price for mocking the Mistress of Pain’s followers,” it continues. They can't see any face beneath the cloak of its hood, and they are reminded suddenly of their necromantic circle.

“Oh, we aren’t mocking anything!” Edward says. “It’s just some constructive criticism.”

"Do you have anything more psychological, for example?" Lydia asks. "I think we could give you some tips that'd really liven up this place."

"You know nothing of the purity of pain," the figure says. "But you will."

The figure comes at them fast as a lightning strike, and the cloud of Suffering surrounds it like a storm cloud. A loud, shrill hiss comes from within the black smoke, and then there is nothing within the cloud but more necrotic energy.

Lydia and Edward exchange a glance as the crowd around them begins closing in on them. They have the power they came for, but their work is only half finished. How much are they going to have to prod before they get what they need?

"It's frankly tasteless, your operation here," Edward says as their Emotion continues to painfully unmake any daemon who gets too close.

"I'm confident we could do better if given the chance," Lydia says.

A chill runs through the muggy air of the torture kingdom. The darkness at the edges of their vision begins to coalesce, and the daemons collectively fall silent.

"And is that what you are after?"

Rising up from the dark of this place comes a woman with sickly pale skin and the height of a god. She looks down on them with interest.

"I suppose it is," Edward says. "Old habits die hard, believe it or not."

"We may not look it by your standards, but we've been around this block a good few times," Lydia says.

The goddess's cold laughter shakes the world around them.

"I know who you are, liches," Loviatar says, and the twins tense. "It is the only reason you remain alive."

A beat passes while Lydia and Edward drift a little closer.

"Oh!" Lydia says finally, smiling. "A fan!"

"Always a pleasure," Edward says.

Loviatar raises her head and looks down her nose at the two of them, her gaze measuring.

"You have created more pure pain than some of my highest-ranking followers in your time," she says. "Have you come to put your powers to my worship, as you always should have?"

"Why else would we be here?" Lydia smiles.

"Would you like a demonstration for your colorful friends?" Edward asks, gesturing at the crowd.

Loviatar stares down at them for another moment, before another resounding scream is heard.

Most of the outcries had been reduced to low moaning as the creatures made their way away from their sacrifices, but the noise returns in full force as one sacrifice is dragged down the hill as if by an invisible hand, through dead grass and over filthy cobbled roads until she lays at their feet.

It is an elven woman with rust red hair and moon-pale skin. Her screaming turns to choked sobs as she comes again to rest, but all of it pours out of her mouth as thin black smoke.

"Show us, then," the goddess commands.

Lydia and Edward look at each other. Giving them only one person makes roughly half of their game unplayable, but they aren't looking to push their luck further.

Lydia bends over to touch the girl's shoulder, but she recoils violently.

Their energy coalesces into the simple shape of a roulette wheel just before the girl, some lights around and over the scene, and a large, golden boombox behind the two of them.

The music turns on with a subtle start, and Lydia and Edward begin explaining the rules of their game to their newest contestant. Out of the corner of their eyes they see Loviatar's bored expression as they put off laying harm to the girl. Just as it seems she may snap at them, the beat drops, and her face goes completely blank.

Lydia and Edward stop with their instructions and turn to face the god and her godservants. The daemons have themselves gone blank with the music. As the music continues the very world around them seems to crack and glow. Loviatar's expression turns dark and her brows furrow, but her eyes still lack any recognition for the kingdom around her.

The song reaches its third stage, and the kingdom explodes.

The world erupts into wind and light and the tangible sensation of breaking down. The music continues despite everything; if anything the destruction seems to be moving in tempo. Lydia and Edward clutch each other's hands until the storm ends. When the music comes to a close they open their eyes and grin.

Nothing. Not a thing but the plain grassy fields of the in-between spaces in the Celestial Plane. The only evidence there was ever anything here are the scattered bodies of the former sacrifices, including the young elven woman. She is still at their feet, looking at them with awe.

Lydia smiles mischievously and raises a finger to her lips. Then she loops her arm through her brother's and the two of them start back towards Reggietown, their creation floating along behind.

*

Pandora’s Boombox sits up above Lydia and Edward’s DJ booth in all it’s glittering golden glory. It’s the hour of noon, so most of the party kingdom is still deserted as gods and angels sleep off last night’s foam party. It’s a good thing they never needed sleep in the first place.

“Bros?”

They jump at the voice of their employer. They turn to face him, and he sets his big meaty hands on their shoulders.

“Reggie!” Edward says, “Hey! You’re up early!”

Lydia hears the anxious strain in her brother’s voice as he glances from their boss to their boombox, but Reggie certainly doesn’t.

“Yeah, I haven’t seen noon thirty in fifteen years! The sun gets so high up there,” Reggie groans and yawns at the same time. “Anyways, got woken up by a messenger from Istus. ‘Parently there was a death?”

“Oh?” Lydia says, her voice an octave higher than normal. “Well those happen often enough, huh?”

“No, like- dudes. A _god_ died,” Reggie says in a hushed voice.

Lydia and Edward gasp dramatically.

“No,” Lydia says.

“No!” Edwards follows.

“_Yeah_,” Reggie says, “I guess the goddess of torture’s whole spot kinda blew up? Literally?”

“Oh dear,” Edward says.

“And all of her followers in the PMP bit it too, so it real-”

“What?”

Reggie blinks at the twins’ unison.

“Yeah… I dunno all the dirty details, but I guess Loviatar did- something? That made everything sacred to her domain- so y’know like. Weapons. Knives. Fires and stuff? But only the ones that were being used for torture, right- bug WAY out. And being PRETTY dangerous-”

“Yeah,” Lydia says flatly.

“Yeah,” Edward says quietly.

“They all died? Pretty much they all died, and not just the actual followers of her, _everyone_ who was torturing _anybody_, in the whole material plane, it’s _wild_ guys. And at first I’m like, that’s not the worst demographic to lose, right?”

Lydia and Edward exchange a look.

“Sure,” Edward says with thin-pressed lips.

“But it’s still like a bummer, y’know?” Reggie continues.

“Absolutely, yes,” Lydia says, nodding.

“So anyways a gotta get to a meeting, you guys are in charge until I get back!”

“Have fun!” Lydia says, waving as Reggie floats away on a beam of strobe light.

They watch him fade into the distance waving and smiling until the light disappears and they are alone together.

“_Shit,_” Edward says.

"This could pose some problems," Lydia agrees.

"That would have been us," he says.

"But it wasn't," she says.

"It won't be like this every time, right?" Edward asks her. "He didn't say they turned deadly, just went wild for a second and killed because of what they were."

"Maybe not," Lydia says. "But I can think of some sort of non-starters for the world as a whole."

"Like?"

"Oh," she continues, "I don't know, there is the issue of the god of the sun?"

Edward inhales sharply through his teeth.

They both look out over the presently-abandoned party floor for another few moments.

"There's no way around that, huh?" Edwards asks.

Lydia nods. "We were wrong. A brief flicker in faith wasn't enough to kill her. It was every one of her believers being wiped out."

They stare for a few seconds more.

"Well!" Edward slaps the DJ-ing table.

"That works."

Lydia blinks up at him. "It does?"

Edward takes her hands.

"I'm not going to lose you again," he says. "We're too close to being safe forever to turn back now. I don't care if the world ends; we'll make a better one, where we'll never have to be apart."

Lydia's smile lights up her entire face. She squeezes her brother's hands and nods.

"We're gonna do this," she says. "We're gonna make it."

"Forever," Edward says, smiling back at her, and if possible her own smile gets brighter.

"Forever," she says in return.

*

"Reginald."

Edward slams a gilded piece of paper onto the table in Reggie's personal quarters.

"Do you know about this?" Lydia says, leaning over him from her brother's other side.

Reggie picks up the paper and furrows his brow.

"'Friendly Get Together At Istus's Place (To Celebrate the Second Anniversary of Kicking the Apocalypse's Ass)'" Reggie reads. He looks up at them excitedly. "Sick! Did this just get dropped off?"

"No," Edward says.

"We picked it off _Mielikki_," Lydia says.

"We've been asking around the other domains, and we've yet to find _one_ who hasn't been invited," Edward says.

"Besides you," Lydia says.

Reggie 's expression slowly falls as they go on. He's looking at them like a kicked puppy by the time he replies, "Why not?"

"Because they’re cowards," Edward says, shaking his head. "They don’t want this to turn into a full-blown party."

"We _have_ to Maleficent this shit," Lydia says.

"I don't know guys," Reggie says, "I don't think Istus has a firstborn to curse…"

They start to laugh before realizing he is completely genuine.

"Listen," Edward says. "We have the _perfect_ way to get them back."

"If they don't want things getting too rowdy," Lydia says, "We're going to make things rowdier than they've ever been before."

Reggie sits up and gives them an interested look. "I'm listening?"

Lydia and Edward exchange a grin.

"Y'know how gods can't get drunk?"

*

Lydia and Edward decided after Loviatar that simply wiping the memories of every god wasn't good enough. The design of their boombox (and their several backups in the form of different music players) acts as a conduit to amplify the mind-altering power they've used on countless Wonderland contestants, but it doesn't have to be limited to wiping memory. Loviatar's death taught them they don't need to make the gods forget; they need to make them lose control. The gods of the world remain vigilant in their holds on the world constantly, always immersed in their domains. If that slips for more than a moment, that domain goes out of control. And when the entire world descends into chaos, every believer will die alongside every other person. The gods will fade away into nothing, and nothing will ever pull them away from each other again.

Lydia and Edward watch through a small green mirror as the sun begins to move out of place, the oceans recede, the forests fall down on their own.

And then they look up as a candelabra is thrown over their head and crashes into the wall behind them, and the faceless god who threw it lets out a "WOO!" and runs off to the other room. They look at each other with excited, genuine smiles. Lydia slips the mirror into her pocket and holds out her hand for her brother. He takes it, and they head out onto the dancefloor to enjoy their last night as godservants.

*

  


  
“Miss me?”

Edward’s spectral form relaxes as reality bends before him and his sister appears. It was a lonely few moments between now and getting vanquished by the twin brother of the person who vanquished him last time. Less waiting than the first lonely death, though.

He hadn't thought Lydia lost enough hit points for the _circle of death_ to actually kill her, and he’s glad to be right.

“Dearly.”

She smiles, and the wisps of Emotion that followed her into this plane surround him.

Lydia knits her fingers together, and the dark smoke around them knits itself around the soul of her brother until she can see him standing before her, unalive in living color.

He floats toward her on instinct, hand coming to her arm. His expression has turned melancholy.

“We really screwed the pooch on that one, huh?” he says.

She sighs. She knows he means more than their failure to complete their plan.

“It wasn’t sustainable,” she says softly, “The grim reapers would have come for us eventually. At least now we still have our freedom,” she takes his hand in her own. “We still have each other.”

He leans into her, burying his face in her shoulder.

“So,” she says after a moment, glancing over his shoulder at the distant Prison Greyskull, and then the sea of souls below. It is no longer oil-slicked, and she can see millions of little lights swimming in and around it. “While we're here.”

Edward lifts his head.

"Do you really think...?" he asks, looking down at the souls along with his sister. 

"We didn't have the opportunity last time," she says, "But we c-"

She's cut off by the sound of a sharp _caw _, startlingly close.

Lydia and Edward spin all the way around, but they can't see the source of the noise. They clutch each others' hands tight. 

"Shit," she says. "_Shit_."

Lydia stares down at the souls. Then looks up at Edward.

She lifts her hands to start channeling a _plane shift_, but he stops her.

“We can't let her get us," Lydia says frantically, without letting him get half a word in. "They won't let us see him! It'll be no different then if we leave, except we'll be in _prison_, enduring who-knows-what-goes-on-in-there!"

There is another _caw_, closer but still unseen.

Lydia squeezes his hands. "Please. I can't lose you both, not again _please_-"

"Lydia," he says, squeezing her hands back and looking her in the eyes. "There's no where in the planar system we can go where they won't find us one day. We just tried to destroy the entire world. Everyone in this existence is going to be out for our blood."

"We can't just give up," she whispers.

"I don't want to," Edward says, "But we can't spend eternity hiding. You remember what that was like. It almost killed us."

Of course she remembers, hundreds of years dredging in the dark caverns their circle used to inhabit. Until that day when they happened upon that bandit raid. Until she came up with their edit on the Lichuals.

"What if we went farther than just another plane?" she asks.

He looks at her. "What?"

"Like in the Story," she says. "A whole new world, that can't be reached from here." She bites her lip as the wheels keep turning in her head. "A random one, so even if they could find a way to move planar systems without their ship they'd have no clue where to look!"

"Can we do that?" Edward asks incredulously.

"We can try," Lydia says. 

Another _caw_ sounds, and they can tell it will be the last. 

"The stakes are as high as the first time," she says quietly. 

They'll succeed, or... they won't be anything, anymore.

They look at each other for a long moment. 

"Together?" Edward asks.

Lydia smiles. 

They both begin channeling through the remaining Emotion an edit on _plane shift_, not unlike their oldest edit on the Lichuals. They're winging it, rewriting the spell together as they chant it to fit their current needs, weaving in the ideas of inter-planar system travel the Story gave them a window into. When every facet is put into place they put a finish on it, and open their eyes.

Nothing's changed. For a moment they feel devastation, but then they feel the pull that comes with teleportation magic, stronger than they've ever felt before. 

Their hands are still locked in each other's as their vision of this world begins to fade. They don't know what's claimed them, their own spell or the gods'. They see a whirling black mass of feathers, the source of the noises finally visible and nearly upon them. They both look away, towards the sea of souls below them, and they don't know whether Keats is one of the many lights they can see but with all the substance left in their rapidly-fading forms, they manage to call out _"We're sorry." _

They can no longer see the sea through the birds. They close their eyes to the world and cut off their already-fading senses, holding each other. Just as they know they are about to be taken, they call out-

_"We love you."_

They brace for the impact of the death goddess's justice. Moments pass. And then they realize they can no longer hear the flapping of wings.

They open their eyes, and there are no birds. The prison is no longer in their periphery. Nor is the sea of souls. The world around them is still dark and quiet, but in a different way from the Astral Plane. The empty spaces are black, not blue, and the filled spaces take Lydia and Edward’s nonexistent breath away.

Twelve shimmering disks of light, like were described in the Story countless times. The twins are floating just above a dark blue disc, and they seem like just specs in the massive expanse of it. They try floating up and away from it- they still can. The other discs are just as expansive- one of them, they realize, so much more so.

The blue-green central disc of this world has the same diameter as any of the others, but unlike the others, it is multi-layered. Two full discs rest one on top of the other, with several smaller ones sticking out of the space between, and thin, silvery lines weaving through and connecting them all.

“It worked,” Edward whispers.

“It worked,” Lydia says, almost like she didn't hear him, caught up in the awe of the sight before them.

"Why aren't we inside this Astral Plane?" Edward wonders.

Lydia blinks over at him, then down at the dark blue disk.

"They always entered a system through the outer space." she says. "It's the means of travel we were familiar with. Focusing on."

Edward nods. Then he hugs her fiercely.

She gasps a little, then laughs. She hugs him back just as tight.

"We did it," he says.

"It's over," she says, "We're free."

"We can have a fresh start."

They embrace for a long time, before finally looking up. 

“Let’s,” Edward says, clutching his sister’s spectral hand and gesturing on towards the Prime Material Plane(s).

Lydia tilts her head, and wraps her arm around him entirely.

“Forever,” she says, unprompted, but he knows what she means.

“Forever,” he returns, as they float through the vast expanse of space towards their new world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love them. So much. I want only good things for them

**Author's Note:**

> Me, writing how's the weather (am i better): so theyve been defeated but at least they're in a better place now and they can see their brother again and start working towards becoming bett-
> 
> Griffin Mcelroy, writing the New Orleans Live Show: ACTUALLY they're doin' good! They've been fine the whole time! In party heaven! Living it the fuck up! they WILL NOT be stopped!
> 
> Me, immediately pulling up a keyboard and starting to write this: fuckin'- alright here we go!
> 
> Anywho thanks for coming, I love Lydia and Edward so much and the New Orleans show had me literally screaming with joy. I originally wrote this as a bunch of disapparate live show-related scenes just for fun, but I loved it so much I decided to fill in the gaps in between and polish it up and publish it. Title comes from [Tried to Be Nice by Phantoms ft. Harlie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ikXs5qKfMY)  
Kudos and Comments are both greatly appreciated!!


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